Art vs. Art!
Sep. 14th, 2008 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flameravenIt is an absolutely horrid day out. Pouring rain and big gusts of wind; it's completely miserable. It's just as well I don't have anything really to do today, I am more than content to simply sit around and play video games and read. And sometimes play with the cats. You know.
They had forecast rain all weekend, but yesterday was actually lovely; hot and humid, sure, with an unseasonable high of 87 or so, but it was bright and sunny, and generally quite nice.
Which was great, because yesterday was Art vs. Art.
For those of you who haven't heard of it, AvA is a winner-take-all painting competition. They run events in Hammond (IN), Columbus (OH), and Louisville, as well as Indianapolis. You go, they give you all the supplies (18x24" canvasboard, brushes, and acrylic paint in red, yellow, blue, white and black), and you have four hours to paint something. Everything goes up online, and you vote for the ones you like best. Those who get the most votes--29 in Indianapolis, 1 each from the other locations--go on to the finals.
The finals is where it really gets fun. When you go in you get cards to vote for your favorites of the 32 finalists. The top 16 go on; the others are sold for $50 each. The top 16 then face off in a life-or-death contest; the one which gets the crowd's approval survives for the next round. The loser must face the Wheel of Death. You can save the painting from its chosen death (things like being chopped by a katana, chainsaw'd, tagged, etc) by buying it in auction. The single painting which survives is the all-out champion, and the winner gets $3000.
Pretty good chances, for a $10 entry fee.
I'd heard of AvA before; but missed the event last year. This year, my mom actually came down to do it with me, which worked out pretty well.
We got there about twenty minutes early, so my canvas was marked at 12:02. I finished at about quarter to four, well within my four hours. It was a little frantic at the end, I'll admit, and the painting was intense, but it was a lot of fun. The biggest challenge really was working with the terrible materials they gave you. I knew they were going to give us cheap materials to keep down on costs, because there were over 100 artists on the floor at Indy, but it turned out the materials were even cheaper than I expected. Canvasboard is always kind of a bitch to work on, and the paints didn't help. You had to layer a color two or three times at least to get any kind of real coverage.
So obviously the painting didn't turn out quite as well as I'd wanted, and I couldn't get the crazy colors like I would in a digital piece or even a watercolor, but I thought it turned out pretty well all the same:
And a smaller vision, with a bit of correction in Photoshop for color and contrast:
You can go to http://artvsart.com to vote for the paintings. I'm Canvas #305, although the voting for Indianapolis is not up just yet. I will make a reminder post when it is. You are allowed one vote per e-mail address, so keep that in mind when you go to vote. ;) You do have to sign-in to your e-mail and confirm your vote this year, just to let you know.
I am pretty pleased. As I expected, it didn't really look like there was a lot of competition; a lot of people just painted abstracts or something. There were a handful that were pretty good, but I definitely think I have a good shot at the finals, at least.
I do want to probably do a second version of this painting, either digitally or in watercolor, just because I didn't really capture what I wanted to this time. Perhaps for Masterpiece in a Day...?
They had forecast rain all weekend, but yesterday was actually lovely; hot and humid, sure, with an unseasonable high of 87 or so, but it was bright and sunny, and generally quite nice.
Which was great, because yesterday was Art vs. Art.
For those of you who haven't heard of it, AvA is a winner-take-all painting competition. They run events in Hammond (IN), Columbus (OH), and Louisville, as well as Indianapolis. You go, they give you all the supplies (18x24" canvasboard, brushes, and acrylic paint in red, yellow, blue, white and black), and you have four hours to paint something. Everything goes up online, and you vote for the ones you like best. Those who get the most votes--29 in Indianapolis, 1 each from the other locations--go on to the finals.
The finals is where it really gets fun. When you go in you get cards to vote for your favorites of the 32 finalists. The top 16 go on; the others are sold for $50 each. The top 16 then face off in a life-or-death contest; the one which gets the crowd's approval survives for the next round. The loser must face the Wheel of Death. You can save the painting from its chosen death (things like being chopped by a katana, chainsaw'd, tagged, etc) by buying it in auction. The single painting which survives is the all-out champion, and the winner gets $3000.
Pretty good chances, for a $10 entry fee.
I'd heard of AvA before; but missed the event last year. This year, my mom actually came down to do it with me, which worked out pretty well.
We got there about twenty minutes early, so my canvas was marked at 12:02. I finished at about quarter to four, well within my four hours. It was a little frantic at the end, I'll admit, and the painting was intense, but it was a lot of fun. The biggest challenge really was working with the terrible materials they gave you. I knew they were going to give us cheap materials to keep down on costs, because there were over 100 artists on the floor at Indy, but it turned out the materials were even cheaper than I expected. Canvasboard is always kind of a bitch to work on, and the paints didn't help. You had to layer a color two or three times at least to get any kind of real coverage.
So obviously the painting didn't turn out quite as well as I'd wanted, and I couldn't get the crazy colors like I would in a digital piece or even a watercolor, but I thought it turned out pretty well all the same:
And a smaller vision, with a bit of correction in Photoshop for color and contrast:
You can go to http://artvsart.com to vote for the paintings. I'm Canvas #305, although the voting for Indianapolis is not up just yet. I will make a reminder post when it is. You are allowed one vote per e-mail address, so keep that in mind when you go to vote. ;) You do have to sign-in to your e-mail and confirm your vote this year, just to let you know.
I am pretty pleased. As I expected, it didn't really look like there was a lot of competition; a lot of people just painted abstracts or something. There were a handful that were pretty good, but I definitely think I have a good shot at the finals, at least.
I do want to probably do a second version of this painting, either digitally or in watercolor, just because I didn't really capture what I wanted to this time. Perhaps for Masterpiece in a Day...?
